New Toy

Been crazy busy with work so haven't mapped out my week's plan or written online yet this week. Quick break btwn gym and sleep now to be geeky.

In the never ending quest for the perfect mapping solution, I have been playing with mapmyrun. I really like runstoppable.com but it is very slow and can take me a few refresh tries and lose maps a bit too much unfortunately.

Today's easy run below. Just 2 miles, but felt easy and good. Must remember outside is so much less boring than treadmill.

Hooray! Rest Day

Thanks for dropping by and leaving comments. I feel like a real blogger :)

Well, I made it this far into the week. And thankfully the schedule says rest day for today. Normally i find this the hardest part of the schedule to follow, but not this week.

First week ever of 3 days running in a row. But it was raining and I am a big girl's blose, so to the treadmill I headed. Treadmills are the devil's work and I have an idle mind. I listened to some of Stephen King's 'On Writing' and 'Blaze' while running but all too often, the running mantra of 'bored, bored, bored, bored etc' would slip in.

Somehow I made the distance every day, not fast times but 3mi, 2mi, 3mi on Mon-Wed so thats something great :) The only parts of my program I skipped were elliptical and abs last night. After running 3mi, then doing a BodyPump class I figured that was enough calories burnt and abs worked for one day. I can shuffle the extra abs workout to Sunday and that kinda fits into the same week.

Kinda sore today, but not the bad kinda pain, just the kind that tells you that effort has been put in. Saturday is a planned 4mi run, so I will do that by the Esplanade to give me some distraction. Slow & steady.

Best (and only) running purchase of the week, is a crockpot style slow cooker. Wooh, load it up with meat, veges, rice and some liquid in the morning, set it on auto and come home from gym to a yummy meal which just needs dishing. Easy to wash afterwards too. As morning aren't my strong suit I will probably load it up the night before and refrigerate, then stumble into kitchen and hope I can work out the auto setting :) It is running related really!

And the non running/exercising part of the post, because it tickled my funny bone. 'Man cold' a short video clip about why men just feel SO much worse when they get sick. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXLHWmjA5IE

The view from the top

This is my 'nemesis hill' AKA the Red Arrow.

The view from the shelter shed view point at the top of the Red Arrow Walk at Mt Whitfield Conservation Park. This walk is 1.3 (.8mi) at a 100m elevation approximately. When i first attempted this walk about a year ago I had to stop 2-3 times to beathe. Somehow now I can do 4 laps non stop. Hooray!

As hikes go, it is an easy one, ashphalt paths and wooden steps. Very well trafficed on weekends and after work hours before dark. People of all ages and sizes do this walk. I have spoken to a lady who must have been in her 80s visiting Cairns, taken snaps for tourists at the top, and spoken with a dad with a tiny baby.

Local exercisers run the whole walk, up and down. I'm not quite there yet, but hopefully before I leave Cairns in 3 months or so. I think a lot of people use the track to train for the Pyramid Race too.

And so well worth the effort. The other view looks over the airport, so you can sit and watch the planes take off from Cairns International Airport for hours. It is so peaceful and a great break away from the keyboard and indoors. I've seen eagles soaring, and always cross the path of bush turkeys while surrounded by forest.

First Day of Half Marathon Training

So today is the first day of the new training plan. I'm following Hal Higdon's Novice Plan for Half Marathon. Slightly modified to bring everything 1 day ahead. This plan will peak in 12 weeks to have me ready for the World Wide Half, assuming no injuries and I am fit enough to keep up with the plan. Otherwise I have a couple of backup plans from CoolRunning.

I am using TrainingPeaks to track my progress, this looks like a very thorough training log website with the amount of info it lets me track. I am using the free version, if it looks GREAT i will pony up for the paid service which has all kinds of additional functionality for the geek inclined.

So this morning, planning my workouts for the week and it looks kinda like this:
Sun- PM - Strength (Upper) + Pilates + Hike up the Red Arrow
Mon - AM - 3mi run PM - Exercise bike +Abs
Tue - AM - 2mi Treadmill Run + Abs PM - Exercise Bike
Wed - AM - 3mi Run PM - BodyPump Class + Elliptical + Abs
Thu - Rest
Fri - AM - 30 Min Bicycle PM - Red Arrow + Exercise Bike + Abs
Sat - AM - 4mi Run + Elliptical + Hike

As well as running, I try to maintain a 3500/week calorie deficit to shift the last bit of weight to get down to my goal weight, therefore additional cardio work pretty much every day. Later I will be able to run long enough to burn the calories on my runs, but currently I don't have the endurance.

So that looks like an awful lot, but I like the AM/PM workouts. A great start to the day and plenty of time for working in between. Will see how it all goes :)

Why Run?

I have always wanted to run but been unable due to bad back issues, pinched nerves, sciatica and so forth. In my internet travels, I ran across http://www.coolrunning.com/ where a lot of people of different shapes, sizes, ages and fitness levels were talking about the Couch to 5 k running program. Basically, a gentle run-walk interval program over 9 weeks where many people have graduated and moved on (eventually to longer distance endurance running).

The next few years of my life will be living 6 months in Cairns and 6 months in Sydney, so a portable and accessible exercise option like running (just some shoes and out the door right?) sounds great! Cairns is beautiful weather, warm 9 months of the year with ocean, flats and hills to explore. Sydney is a large city but set by the water also, with many parks.

So, I thought I would start the C25k and see where it led me. I found a great group of people on coolrunning and we all encouraged each other as we progressed. It works! I can now run 30 mins non stop and 3 miles in around 35 mins non stop, depending on whether I am going for time or distance on any given day.

It seems surreal that I can run after 20+ years of wanting it, but it's true. After 20+ years of being held back by my health, it really astounds me I can do this and keep doing it.

So, where to from here? I have registered for the World Wide Half, and hoping to be prepared for a Half Marathon (21.1km) by mid-October.

After that, who knows? Maybe a marathon or a triathlon somewheres.

No limits to what I can do, if i work at it and train, slowly but steadily.

A Running Blog?

Somehow I can run? Well, I know why, it's due to the excellent Couch to 5 K (C25k) running program designed to get people from the couch to being able to run 30 minutes or 5km without stopping over a progression of 9 weeks.

I listen to anything and everything to distract me from the fact I am actually running, and recently was listening to a Phedippidations Podcast at the gym to see if it would be useful for me while running. The topic of the Podcast was Run. Blog and Share, and it mentioned that everyone should blog because maybe, just maybe they can inspire someone else to start or encourage someone to keep going. While I am no means an expert on running, if I can help someone then why not?

So this blog, while intended as running, will no doubt regress to a record of all my workouts, I crosstrain at the gym, doing weights, classes, elliptical, abs and intend on jumping back on my bicycle next week too.

I'm also a geek girl, so there will be crazy gadget geekiness as well as just general things i run across in the running/exercise arena.

I doubt anyone will stumble across this blog for a while yet, but if you do, please leave a comment and tell me how things are in your world :)